Gaelic Written Alphabet

Writing in the Gaelic Irish language first appeared around the time
St Patrick introduced Christianity to Ireland in the 5th century. As
Latin was the language of communication within the Church, most early
writing was in Latin and the writers were most often priests or monks.
The Gaelic written alphabet used in Irish literature is an adapted form
of the Latin alphabet.

The Irish Gaelic Alphabet in Print

The traditional Irish alphabet is basically an adaptation of the Latin
alphabet and was used commonly in Ireland until the middle of the last century.
You can still see it on some signs and public notices in Ireland and on
shop signs. It
really consists of 18 letters, similar to the Scottish
Gaelic alphabet. The Gaelcló font
that is used below includes the other 8 letters, so I have included them
in parentheses.

Traditional Gaelic Written Alphabet

The Gaelic Alphabet today (an aibítir)

Today people write and type Irish Gaelic with the standard Latin alphabet.
The Irish alphabet uses 24 of the 26 letters
of
the English alphabet, as
opposed to the original number of 18. That said, there are few words with
j, k, v, x, y or z, and the ones which do exist are generally words incorporated
from English. Examples include zú
(zoo), vóta (vote), yóyó (yo-yo).

While I am open to correction, there are no examples of
words with the letter 'q' as they are generally handled by using the hard
Irish 'c'. The letter 'c' in Gaelic
is pronounced as the English 'k'. So, for example, the country 'Qatar'
is translated as 'Catar' and pronounced similarly.

There is also no real
need for 'w' either but the sound exists, you may be surprised to
read, in the combination of consonants 'bh' or 'mh'. For example 'an-mhaith'
which is pronounced 'an-wah' means 'very
good'.

Most of the Gaelic letters are pronounced somewhat similarly to their English
equivalent. However, one influence from Gaelic is the way many Irish people
pronounce the
letter 'a'. In Irish it's pronounced as 'ah' or as the 'a' in 'cat'. Many
Irish people pronounce it this way in English.

It is important to remember also the elongated forms of vowels. The accent
on each letter is called a 'fada' meaning 'long'. So we refer to 'ó'
as 'o fada'

á (pronounced 'aw' as in 'paw')

é (pronounced 'ay' as in 'bay')

í (pronounced 'ee' as in 'wee')

ó (pronounced oh as in 'no')

ú (pronounced 'oo' as in 'too')

Note on the Ogham Alphabet

When the the Latin based Gaelic written alphabet was introduced towards the
end of the 5th century, it existed for some time alongside the archaic Ogham
alphabet, the earliest written Gaelic
alphabet.
The Ogham
alphabet
was a basic system of writing consisting mainly of a series of lines to denote
a letter. Ogham writing was often carved into sticks or trees but the surviving
examples are in stone- see photo. The Latin alphabet gradually replaced the
Ogham alphabet in the 6th and 7th century.